Trip 16: Pensacola, Florida

It was another long driving day from Memphis to Pensacola, but we managed to get there in a single day.  J and L took the truck and trailer ahead the same night as our Memphis event to be able to do some set-up earlier, but R, D and I followed in the Tahoe the next day.  It was a fun drive down, but a quieter one than usual - normally, we're all fairly social in the car and chat the whole drive down, but for this drive, we were doing work on our laptops for a good deal of it and reading backlogs of papers.

We stopped for lunch in Mississippi at a little family-run gas station and I bought homemade fried chicken and cornbread for lunch, which was amazingly southern and tasty and far better than the Jolly Rancher flavored sodas that we decided to try with them.  Also, did you know that there is a camouflaged themed energy drink brand?  Me neither.  Welcome to the South!

I finished catching up on world news somewhere around Mobile, Alabama, right about when the freeway turned into a huge long freeway bridge over water which took us into Florida.

It was seriously miles long, and actually pretty cool to drive across.  It was fairly obvious when we reached Pensacola:

Airplanes and fighter jets everywhere!  It's very much a military town; we saw a lot of personnel at the hotel where we stayed, coming in or leaving on orders.  We were about five miles down the road from the Air Force Base (and almost accidentally found ourselves on base when we tried to take the Tahoe to get a car wash!).

Once we arrived in town and threw all our things at the hotel, we went over to the site for the upcoming event.  It was held at a high school proud to be the home of Emmitt Smith, so of course we got out our football again and played some catch before we started what set up we could in the dark.

There's currently some debate over whether Springfield or Pensacola was our hottest event of the year - I personally vote for Springfield, but I'm in the minority as the others seem to think Pensacola was worse.  It was certainly muggier!  But by now, we were at least smart when it came to the heat and kept out of it as much as we could in the tent shade and by dumping ice onto each other.  I was smart and kept plenty hydrated - no making the same mistake as New York!

I was also cheerful because right after the event ended, I'd get to head to the airport and fly back to Seattle for three whole days before our next event in New Orleans.  So I didn't mind resetting all our alligator dummies in the heat when I knew home was coming up soon!

After the event, it was back to the hotel for quick showers in the rooms of those who were staying, and then D, L and I were ferried to the airport for our flight back to Seattle.  It was the end of our longest trip downrange: we were back working in Seattle for just under 24 hours around July 11th, but other than that we were downrange July 5th to August 3rd.  It was our longest trip out, and all of us were glad for the three upcoming days we'd have off at home before our next round started!

-Beth